Triskellion 3: The Gathering

by Will Peterson

  Adam nodded. The Triskellion was vibrating again. It felt hot against his skin.

  Although this building was also windowless, there was at least a visible way in: a single door was outlined against the dark metal by the skein of light round its edge. Rachel took a step towards it and wrapped her fingers round the handle.

  She looked over her shoulder at Gabriel. “My grandmother stood here,” she said. “Over forty years ago. Right here on this spot.” She closed her eyes and pushed. The door was unlocked. She felt a wave of energy – white-hot and dangerous – wash across her from inside, and when she opened her mouth to speak, the back of her throat felt burned and raw; it tasted of the perfume her grandmother had worn when she was alive. “And she was terrified…”

  “Is that a British accent?” the man asked.

  “New Zealand,” Laura said, bending the truth a little.

  “That’s in Canada, right?”

  “That’s right,” Laura said. It suited her that geography was clearly not the man’s strong point.

  He had picked her up just outside Oklahoma City. She had already hitched a ride on a truck out of Tulsa, eager to get away as fast as possible from the terrible scene in the store. She had borrowed a cap from the truck driver and had tucked her hair into it. She knew Scoppetone would have put a search out for her and her red hair and Australian accent would make her conspicuous. She would have to keep moving, and keep moving fast. As an attractive woman, she had had less trouble getting lifts than she might have otherwise had and her current driver was by no means immune to her charms.

  “Larry Douglas,” he said. “I’m from Kalamazoo.” He held out a smooth pudgy hand for Laura to shake and she realized he was waiting to hear her name.

  “Mel Campbell,” she said.

  “Lovely name for a lovely lady,” Larry said. He raised one eyebrow and smiled what he clearly considered to be his very best lady-killer smile.

  Laura groaned inwardly. The last thing she needed right now was to be hit upon by a Midwest salesman who smelled strongly of aftershave. She had more important things to worry about. While Larry droned on about sales figures and the new car he was going to buy, Laura’s eyes darted around nervously, watching for police cars, her mind racing. What on earth was happening to Kate?

  The man Kate had killed back in Australia had been an American. She was an American citizen, so she would be tried in the US. Scoppetone had arrested Kate in the state of Oklahoma with local backup, so she would have to stay in the state until a judge decided to send her back to New York – or not. Scoppetone would want her in New York, but the local small-town force might try to keep her in Tulsa. They would see it as a feather in their caps to have such a high-profile international case on their patch.

  A sickening thought began to dawn on Laura. Oklahoma still had the death penalty. If Kate was tried here, she might face…

  “Penny for your thoughts,” Larry said.

  “Sorry, I was daydreaming. I’m real tired.”

  “I can stop at a motel, if you like,” Larry said, putting his hand on Laura’s knee.

  Thirty seconds later Laura was walking along the roadside, waiting anxiously for her next ride. She was pleased to see a bus approach over the horizon and even more delighted when she saw that one of its destinations was Amarillo.

  She was heading in the right direction.

  The winds had died down a little, but the rain was still torrential and Commodore Wing could barely see the road ahead of him as he carefully steered the Land Rover away from Waverley Hall and around the village green towards The Star.

  The pub was as full as the commodore could remember seeing it, with villagers gathered in clusters round tables or standing several deep at the bar. They were talking in hushed tones about the terrible storm: comparing notes and telling horror stories about the dreadful havoc it had wreaked. Many were temporarily homeless and were getting ready to spend a second night in sleeping bags at the church or the village hall.

  “Commodore…”

  “Sir…”

  “Good to see you, Commodore…”

  Wing acknowledged the greetings with a nod and limped across to the bar, Merlin loping along at his side, faithful as always. He signalled to Tom Hatcham, the landlord, who immediately began pouring a large whisky, then he turned to see a familiar face, smiling at him from the end of the bar.

  Creased, cracked and all but toothless, Jacob Honeyman looked as though he’d struggled for miles through the horrendous weather to get there. He looked bedraggled and confused. It was exactly the way he usually looked.

  “Good evening, Jacob,” the commodore said.

  The beekeeper grunted a hello and nodded towards the door. “It’s all going on.”

  “The storm, you mean?”

  “All of it,” Honeyman said. He grinned, showing off the few brown teeth he had left. “Reckon it’s time to start building an ark.”

  “How are the hives holding up?” Wing asked.

  Honeyman downed what was left of his beer. “Empty,” he said. “Haven’t got a single bee left.” He leaned in close as if imparting a secret. “They’ve all gone home…”

  Tom Hatcham walked over with Wing’s whisky. The commodore downed it in one. “Get everyone a drink, will you, Tom?”

  “What, the whole place?” Hatcham said.

  Wing nodded.

  Hatcham banged an empty glass on the bar to get every-one’s attention and announced that the commodore was buying a round for the whole pub. There were predictable cheers and backslapping and a raucous rendition of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow”. The commodore smiled politely, waving and nodding to his fellow customers – some of whom he had known his entire life. Those who knew him well would have recognized the fear visible in the lines around his eyes and the corners of his mouth.

  Hatcham was one of those few. “Are you all right, sir?” he asked. “It’s not about that phone call the other night, is it? Sorry for giving that woman your number, but I didn’t know what else—”

  Wing waved the landlord’s concerns away and leaned forward. “I need to ask you a favour, Tom.”

  Hatcham nodded. “Name it.”

  “Will you look after Merlin for a while?” He gestured at the dog lying at his feet. “I have to take a trip and there isn’t anyone else I can think of to ask.”

  Hatcham said that he would be happy to take the dog and asked the commodore where he was going. When he didn’t get an answer, he tried to lighten the mood by telling the commodore that he had certainly picked the right time to take a holiday – what with the atrocious weather and everything…

  Wing nodded slowly, then stood up and walked towards the door. The dog scrambled to its feet, but Wing raised a hand, and the animal stayed where it was.

  “How long will you be away?” Hatcham called.

  Wing kept walking. His stick rattled against the wooden floor, and those gathered at the bar stood by silently and watched him leave. Behind him the dog began to whimper.

  “Stay, Merlin,” Wing said. He shut his eyes tightly against the tears and took a deep breath before yanking the door open and stepping out into the storm.

  The first room was a laboratory.

  Rachel felt the sting of industrial disinfectants drive away the memory of her grandmother’s perfume.

  Adam switched on the lights. They flickered on, revealing workbenches and rows of sinks. There were microscopes and centrifuges on every surface, and the shelves were stacked with files and boxes. Adam took down a file. It was marked BETA CLASSIFIED. He opened it and saw diagrams of DNA structures. Thousands of samples were listed alongside graphs and figures.

  He showed Rachel the file and she shrugged. “Doesn’t mean anything to me,” she said.

  “DNA,” Adam said. “Looks like they study genetics here. I thought this place was going to be all about rocket science and stuff.”

  Rachel looked at Gabriel. He was pale and shivering. “You OK?” she said. She reac
hed out and laid a hand on his arm.

  “No,” Gabriel whispered. “This is all wrong. Someone has let us in here. Someone wants us to see all this and I don’t know why.”

  Rachel suddenly felt sorry for him. He looked lost and lonely; she put her arm round him.

  He began to cry. “My mind won’t work. I can’t stand this noise, and I just feel we’re close to something very bad.”

  Rachel didn’t know what to say, so she just pulled him tighter to her. She hated it when Gabriel showed any weakness. If he didn’t know what to do, who did?

  Adam was looking at a computer at the end of the lab. A Triskellion screensaver was moving slowly across its screen.

  “Click on it,” Rachel said.

  Adam hit the RETURN key and the screen came to life. On the desktop was an MPEG: a clip of film.

  Adam double-clicked on it.

  A grainy silent black and white film loaded, revealing a desert landscape. Mechanical debris was scattered around, and as the camera zoomed in, it became clear that they were seeing the aftermath of a plane crash. Military policemen and airmen were hurrying around the area in jerky fast-forward. The camera cut to a man on a stretcher. They recognized his face and then a subtitle confirmed it:

  GROUP CAPT. WING.

  His eyes were open and he looked around wildly. His face was dirty and scorched.

  The camera cut to something on the ground. The film was blotchy, but they could see the outline of a body. The image tightened, but they could make out little more than a head.

  The film changed to an interior. A lab. The light was brighter and men in white coats stood around an operating table. The camera pushed between the men and they moved aside to allow the camera to see what they were working on.

  “No,” Rachel said. She thought she was going to be sick.

  Adam kept watching, horribly fascinated, but Gabriel stepped forward and stabbed at the PAUSE button. “No!”

  The horrifying image remained, frozen on the screen – the opened belly, the guts laid out on one side…

  Before Gabriel had paused the film, they had seen that the arms and legs, although strapped to the table, were moving. The eyes were open and the head was rolling from side to side. Despite being smashed and torn apart, the body these men were operating on was still alive, and conscious.

  “Keep moving,” Gabriel said. His face was white and he was shaking as he pushed them away from the screen.

  They opened a heavy door into another room. It was much cooler than the first and lit by pale industrial lights. There were jars and bottles on the shelves, and one whole wall was covered with what looked like a vast stainless steel filing cabinet. Rachel looked closely at the jars. They appeared to be filled with human body parts: internal organs, slices of brain, eyes…

  “It’s the morgue,” Adam said.

  Seeing him close his eyes, Rachel understood that he was seeing the same thing that she was; they were once more seeing through their grandmother’s eyes. She could taste that perfume again, feel her grandmother’s fear. This was what Celia Root had been so terrified by…

  Celia had made a decision. She needed to know everything! What Gerry had told her by the lake wasn’t enough – she wanted to see it for herself.

  Her heart was thumping against her ribs as she knocked on the door of Gerry’s office in the senior airmen’s block. After waiting a moment she reached for the handle and was amazed to find the door unlocked. She stepped inside, calling out Gerry’s name, though it was clear there was nobody there.

  She wandered behind the desk and dropped into the seat, and began absently flicking through the papers piled up on the leather desktop. There were reports marked URGENT and STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL and many files were marked BETA: TOP SECRET…

  “What on earth do you think you’re doing, Celia?”

  She looked up to see Gerry in the doorway. “I was just waiting for you. We need to talk. We—”

  “These things are secret.”

  Celia grabbed the pile of files and folders from the desk and threw them across the room at him. “I’m sick of secrets,” she said. “I want to know! What you told me by the lake—”

  He strode over to her, took hold of her shoulders and shook her. “You want to see?”

  She nodded.

  “Right…”

  He all but frogmarched her out of the office, across the compound and into a newly built building she had passed plenty of times but had never been inside. The armed guard acknowledged Wing and then glanced at Celia. Wing nodded. “She has Grade One BETA clearance,” he said.

  They pushed through several sets of doors until Celia became aware of the quiet, and the cold.

  She was suddenly afraid.

  “You want to see.” The fury was still there in Wing’s voice. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  “Please, Gerry…”

  They had stopped at a set of metal doors in which a large round combination lock had been inset. Wing stepped close and began spinning the lock, first one way, then the other.

  With every click, Celia’s fear was ratcheted up a notch.

  When Wing pushed open the door, the blast of cold air took her breath away.

  He stepped aside. “After you, darling.”

  Celia’s breath hung in plumes in front of her face and she stepped into the room. She saw a row of long wooden laboratory benches, each laid out with racks of test tubes, microscopes and Bunsen burners. There were blackboards with diagrams she could make neither head nor tail of and charts filled with columns of figures that made her head swim.

  She walked further into the room and turned to a small alcove that was all but hidden from view by a translucent curtain. She stood frozen. Her hand was raised to move the curtain aside, but she was unable to go any further. In the alcove beyond she could hear something bubbling. A hiss and a hum.

  Wing stepped quickly past her and pushed the curtain to one side. “Is this what you wanted to see?” he said.

  Rachel and Adam opened their eyes at Gabriel’s anguished cry. He was standing at the far end of the room, holding back a plastic curtain, his weeping eyes fixed on what lay behind it.

  Rachel approached. Behind the curtain was a glass cylinder, some two metres tall, its surface coated with frost. The light above shed a ghostly glow into the liquid filling the tube.

  Floating in the cylinder was the body of a naked figure.

  Despite the ragged scars that criss-crossed the body, Rachel thought it looked remarkably peaceful: rotating slowly in its liquid grave. As the body turned and the face came into view, she saw that the hairless skull was fine and domed with high cheekbones and the now empty eye-sockets were almond shaped.

  She realized it looked like Gabriel.

  Gabriel was transfixed by the figure; his hands were pressed to the cold glass of the cylinder and tears coursed down his cheeks.

  “Why do they want us to see this?” Adam asked.

  “To leave you in no doubt about what we do here.”

  The voice – gruff and American – came from behind them. They turned to see a tough-looking man with a broken nose. “Thought you’d rather find out for yourselves than take the guided tour.”

  Rachel was waiting for Gabriel to do something, but he stood still, looking at the floor as if he knew the game was up. She reached out to him with her mind, but the ringing noise was louder than ever.

  “This is where we find out what makes them tick,” the man said. He flicked a finger towards Gabriel. “What makes you all tick. Hope you’re going to be helpful…”

  Suddenly, Adam rushed at the man, ready to kill, but two black-clad military personnel materialized behind him, Taser guns raised. The last thing Adam, Rachel and Gabriel felt was the agony of the powerful voltage coursing through their bodies as they fell to the floor.

  part three:

  the swarming

  “It is time,” Ezekiel Crane said.

  He put down his copy of the Pennsylvania
Globe on the map table of the motor yacht. The Ezekiel One – a sleek forty-foot Predator – had been purchased with generous donations from his loyal followers.

  They had left Philadelphia in triumph. After Crane’s barnstorming rally, another fifty thousand pilgrims would be coming to the Gathering; another fifty thousand who had pledged dollars in tens, twenties, fifties, hundreds to the Church of the Triple Wheel – as followers had from all across America.

  Crane, Jedediah and a dozen or so trusted disciples from the Triple Wheel’s inner circle had picked up the boat at Tom’s River, a small harbour town on the Atlantic coast. Crane had always said that when the time came they would arrive in New York from the sea. He knew very well that when the great day came, all the major road and rail routes would be completely gridlocked.

  “Hallelujah and amen,” Brother Jedediah croaked. He put down the pastor’s drink with a hand that now had a permanent tremor and watched with his remaining good eye as his master took out a bottle of pollen and tapped a small mound out on to the back of his hand, before sniffing the yellow powder up each nostril like a drug. Crane snorted the pollen back into his sinuses and let out a long sigh of pleasure. He added a splash of Dr Pepper to the vodka in front of him and drank it down.

  “Anything else, Pastor?” Jedediah asked timidly. He had looked queasy since they’d got on the water, but he barely spoke now anyway for fear of offending Crane again – the shaking hand and the patch over his blinded eye permanent reminders of what could happen if he did.

  “Hold this down for me,” Crane said. He spread a rolled-up chart out across the map table. It was a facsimile of something very old and was covered in numbers and calculations, with a large symbol in the middle and smaller ones in three of the corners. At the bottom was a verse.

  Brother Jedediah held down its corners with trembling hands. “Looks very old, Pastor,” he hazarded.

  “Older than anything in this God-forsaken country,” Crane said. “It’s English. I kind of grew up with it.”